Of Cookies and Christmas
by AmazingGraceless
Summary: "What do you want?" He demanded in the kind of voice that made all the adults snap for him to be nice. "Mommy said that you were going to make cookies for Santy with me," she said cheerily, ignoring the tone her cousin always used. "Won't you, Ky-Ky?" Kylo Solo and Rey Skywalker make cookies. Pre-movie, Christmas sorta-fluff.


**AN: This is just some Christmas stuff. Possible spoilers. Based off of nightmoves on Tumblr's Kylo Ren theories, along with the Kylo Solo rumor, the Rey Skywalker rumor, and the Rey's Mom was the original Red Five rumor. Enjoy.**

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Red and green lights at Coruscant flashed outside. Kylo Solo turned away from the window and the bright lights to shift uncomfortably as his aunt and his Uncle Luke called his name.

"What?" He demanded, his shoulders hunching up as Leia sent him an icy glare. Behave, it said.

"I was wondering if you would bake cookies for Santa with Rey," his aunt said, shaking out her brown hair that was reddish in the lights of the duroplastic tree. "Your mom, dad, Uncle Luke, and I have to finish off some Christmas shopping. Chewie's in charge, but Rey's been so insistent on baking cookies, and you know that cooking isn't Chewie's strong suit."

"Besides, Rey looks up to you," Luke added.

His parents' eager stares bore holes in him. Inwardly, he groaned, knowing that he'd have to do it. He stood up abruptly, nodded, and walked off to the kitchen and began getting out the ingredients methodically.

It was during these family gatherings that he really wished that he hadn't been "rescued" from the First Order five years ago. All the expectations to do something with his senator mom and his terrorist dad and his fanatical cultist uncle. No thank you. He shuddered at the thought as he pulled out the mixing bowl.

They kept trying to make him the way they wanted, but he was never going to be that way. He couldn't help it that he was uncomfortable with touch, that he could never form those three words on his lips, that he dreaded story time with New Republic propaganda. They wanted him like Rey.

"Ky-Ky?"

 _Speak of the devil_ , he thought viciously, whipping around in surprise. He saw the five-year-old toddling around in her tunic and skirt. She climbed the stool recklessly and blew her dark bangs out of her eyes.

"What do you want?" He demanded in the kind of voice that made all the adults snap for him to be nice.

"Mommy said that you were going to make cookies for Santy with me," she said cheerily, ignoring the tone her cousin always used. "Won't you, Ky-Ky?"

He inwardly groaned at the nickname and closed his eyes and counted to ten. He opened his eyes. Still there. He groaned audibly this time, and sighed. Damn, she was adorable.

"Fine," he finally said in a slightly more welcoming voice. "Could you pull up the holo recipe?"

Rey nodded, but she pulled out her mother's archaic book with real yellowed flimsi pages. Markings of the Naboo filled the cover. She flipped the pages till she saw the picture from the page her mommy used. She pointed at it.

"Chocolate chip?" Kylo peered at the elegant Aubresh script. "Okay then. Go get the measuring cups."

She nodded and obediently.

He smirked at her back. How the First Order would've loved her willingness to obey every order she was ever given. Yet she would always see them as evil, would be brainwashed by her mother and father into thinking them to be evil.

When she came back, she almost dropped the measuring cups. Actually, she did, but she then caught them with the Force and levitated them onto the countertop.

"What's wrong?" Kylo asked in an-almost bored voice.

"You were smiling," Rey said in a voice of childish awe. "You never smile, Ky-Ky."

"Oh," he said, and he started automatically working on the ingredients, forgetting all about Rey. He often drove himself into his tasks to excel. In attempt to try to become the kid his parents wanted, he tried to do everything perfectly. Maybe if he acted like their perfect child, he'd become their perfect child. Despite what they sometimes said, the parental fluff, he saw how they looked at him. How they reacted to the things he said whenever he did actually talk. How they would get frustrated and he'd get frustrated.

True, that would mean that he'd be another child brainwashed by the New Republic, but at least he'd fit in. At least he wouldn't feel so alone.

"Um, Ky-Ky?" Rey's cheery voice drew him out of his reverie.

"What?" He snapped. He hated how happy she could sound, the dimpled expression that appeared permanent on her face, her bubbly laughter.

She visibly cowered. He sighed. If he scared her too badly, he'd never hear the end of it from his parents. He let his face soften. She sat up, awkwardly regaining a little bit of her light and bravery.

"You're almost finished," she said, her bottom lip trembling. "I wanted to help."

"You can help pour in the chocolate chips," he said. "Besides, I did all the hard work for you."

"But Mommy, Daddy, Uncle Han and Aunt Leia say that we should make cookies as a family," Rey protested.

"They aren't here right now, are they?" He snapped. "Just like they weren't there to rescue me when I was your age, just like they still haven't been there to try to understand how I feel! No one's ever tried to understand how I feel!"

Kylo realized that he was crying. He set the spoon down, turned, and slid down the sleek side of the oven. His shoulders shook with tears as they tumbled down and wetted his tunic. It was too much. Too much.

Rey, he could see now, was clearly everything that he could never be. The perfect child his parents had always wanted. The one they were so excited about, not even three months after he'd come home. No one had really been excited about him coming home anymore after that.

He was jealous.

He wanted that ability, to love so freely, to be so luminous.

Instead, he was an ice-cold monster who hated touch, who hated himself and his family and hid behind lies, and more lies, and could never tell who had the truth.

He heard a small thump, and when he took his face away from his hands, he saw little Rey sitting down next to him, her hazel eyes concerned.

"Don' cry, Ky-Ky," she said in her small-child voice. "Please don' cry."

"I can't help it," he sobbed.

Instead of making more naïve pleas to stop, she wrapped her pudgy arms around his shoulders. He stiffened immediately in the gesture. He usually dreaded hugs, couldn't stand the touch, but this time, he took some comfort in the gesture.

"Maybe you can put in the chocolate chips," she suggested.

Of course, Kylo realized. She thinks that it's about that.

He slowly stood up and lifted her back onto the stool. "No, it's fine, you should."

Rey lit up like the tree in the other room, and grabbed the bag of chocolate chips. After watching her struggle with the bag for three minutes, Kylo ripped it open.

Rey smiled at him. "Thank-you!"

She then promptly dumped almost the entire bag into the batter. Kylo intervened at the least moment for fear of getting diabetes from eating these. The little girl then reached into the bag and snatched some of the few chips remaining in the bag.

She held out her hand to him.

It took him a moment to realize that she wanted him to take some of it. He pinched up a few, and murmured a quick thank-you before dumping them in his mouth. The bittersweet taste was oddly gratifying, and he watched as his little cousin's eyes light up at the sugar.

She then put her hands on the spoon and attempted to stir. Kylo put his hands over hers and started stirring. After the batter was of a normal consistency, they dumped it out on the cookie sheet. Rey then dragged over the bowl of cookie-cutters. They were in the shapes of snowmen, tauntauns, X-wings, TIE fighters, Darth Vader's helmet, and stormtrooper helmets.

Kylo froze at the Darth Vader helmet shape. After all the disrespect Lord Vader had in his parents' house, he hadn't expected there to be any of those cookie-cutters in the house. They hated it whenever he watched documentaries on the holo or that sitcom based off of his life or even when he mentioned Vader's name (not Anakin Skywalker).

As Rey pushed in an assortment that was completely random while Kylo made about twenty different Darth Vader cookies. When they had absolutely no more dough left to work with, they started putting batches in.

Rey then insisted in seeing _Randolph the Red-Nosed Tauntaun_ on the holonet while they waited. And she sang every. Single. Song. Yet Kylo wasn't really annoyed by it this time. There was something. . . Nice about having his little cousin cuddling next to him and slowly falling asleep in the blue glow of the holonet.

 _Ding_.

He leapt up and pulled out the last tray of cookies right as the door opened and Chewie growled a welcome.

Kylo quickly washed his hands and went into the living room, where the adults were all cooing at how adorable little Rey was. He clenched his fists and forced down his jealousy. He stormed off to his room. They wouldn't miss him. They never did. They would've forgotten about him if Rey had been born and he'd never come home.

He slammed the door shut behind him and slid down the wall and stared up at the ceiling. It was about twenty minutes later when there was a knock at the door. He sighed and stood, expecting it to be another frustrated adult.

Instead, it was his aunt and little Rey, who was holding a crayon drawing.

"Rey wanted to give this to you for helping her with the cookies," his aunt said with the smile that Rey had obviously inherited. Rey handed Kylo a drawing. It took him a few minutes to decipher the Aubresh scribbles and the drawing, but this is what it said:

 _To Kylo:_

 _You are my hero. Thnks for the cukies._

 _Luv,_

 _Rey_

In spite of himself, he found himself smiling, and he hugged his cousin.

"I love you too, Rey."


End file.
